


Rescue My Heart

by Stiles-for-the-win (SwampWitch)



Series: Rescue My Heart [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Peter can't do magic, and runs a successful apothecary, as a were, but he knows all about it, first work in the fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 17:25:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12089799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwampWitch/pseuds/Stiles-for-the-win
Summary: I got lucky. Really fucking lucky- the person that I loved chose to love me back. You can’t put a price on that. You have to earn that. Not sure if I ever did deserve him, but he loved me anyway.





	Rescue My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> The song is Rescue My Heart by Liz Longley, which I listened to on repeat for two days and wrote the original of this story, which i then gutted and changed to fit this pairing.

 

“Lie and tell myself I can make it on my own;

 Making it alone is lonely;

 Twisting I’m turning oh I’m crashing and I’m burning;

 So reach out your hand to me.”

 

_< How do I describe love? It’s both a feeling as well as a state of being. Love is both abstract and concrete. Loving him was like watching the sun rise. Everything was cold and dark, but then, all of a sudden, it was bright, and warm, and beautiful. Love is the best of us, and his love was the best of me. I would do anything if I could be happy and with him again.>_

 

 “Come down

  Rescue my heart

  I’ll drown

  Without you.”

 ----------------------------

                Peter Hale was a damned prideful man. He had always prided himself on having never needed anyone or anything. He had joked about it with Stiles sometimes. In the years after Peter's resurrection where they worked together, the pair had grown closer. The human left behind, and the weakened wolf not motivated to go. It had taken them the best part of a year to realize that they spent more of their downtime together than they did apart.

                The first night spent together was filled with passion and quiet confessions whispered over warm skin in the darkness. 

                Pack meetings afterwards were filled with looks of longing, and worry for each other, and stolen kisses in heated moments.

                It was only a few months after that first night that they were sharing nearly everything. Stiles had shelves of books and research at Peter’s place. Most of Peter’s clothes and all of his apothecary experiments were at Stiles' place. After one big argument and several rounds of really great makeup sex, they were boxing up everything they owned and moving into a penthouse apartment across the city.

                Days and weeks together turned into months and years. Stiles had never been happier in his entire life. Peter didn’t even know he could be this happy. It was the day that should have been an anniversary- five years together, when Peter’s world ended.

\--------------------------------------

                “Peter Hale, we need your full cooperation for this to be effective. You cannot expect us to grant you your life unless you give us the information you have on Scott McCall.”

                The witch was new to this, Peter could tell. It didn’t change the churning in his gut and the feeling of fire razing across his soul.

                “Is that so? Well I have nothing to say.”

                “Nothing? Maybe then, your life is not worth us saving it.”

                A soft click across the room alerted the woman to Gerard entering the room. She stepped to one side, allowing the older man to stand before Peter.

                “Werewolf.” Gerard spit out.

                “Hunter.” Peter returned in kind.

                “I know that you’re probably the most uncooperative bastard that’s ever been in this room, but it can only help you at this point to tell us what you know.”

                Peter stayed silent. He suffered no illusions that Gerard had any intention of leaving him alive.

                “I have to say, none of the others gave us much. Either they didn’t know anything, or, more likely, you have Derek and young Mr. Stilinski training them to resist interrogation.”

                It was the mention of Stiles' name that did it. The fire burning inside him made him feel like he was going to be sick. Peter’s eyes welled up and his fists clenched where they were cuffed. It felt like a bowling ball was in the pit of his stomach, and a lump was in his throat. The ache burned down the veins in his arms like wolfsbane.

                “Shut up, Argent. You don’t get to say his name.” Peter’s voice was filled with so much pain that Gerard looked genuinely shocked. He turned to the young witch, who was pale, and had a knowing look on her ashen face.

                Peter stared at her, thinking about every good memory he ever had about Stiles, knowing she could see right into his heart.

                “Stop! Stop, oh it hurts-” she started sobbing openly, and she collapsed onto the floor of the interrogation room. Gerard crowded in, a look of almost- concern written across his face. He glanced back at Peter, who had tears rolling down his face.

\-----------------------------

“Come down and rescue my heart

 I’m deep underground

 I can’t dig my way out;

 So come down.”

 

_< I got lucky. Really fucking lucky- the person that I loved chose to love me back. You can’t put a price on that. You have to earn that. Not sure if I ever did deserve him, but he loved me anyway.>_

 

\-----------------------------

                Stiles and Peter’s mornings were filled with coffee and lazy kisses and whispered promises. Every day felt like waking up in a dream. The evenings were filled with sweat, and the soft glide of skin. Panting breaths and soft moans filled the apartment they shared.

                The first time that Stiles told Peter that he loved him, he was still held tight against Peter's body. Peter's arms were still around the sides of Stiles’ face, still flushed, and still glowing with the rush of his orgasm. Peter had smiled, but didn’t say it back.

                The first time that Peter told Stiles that he loved him it was in the middle of a battle. It was in front of everyone. The ones that seemed shocked didn’t dare to say anything. The ones that knew just gave the man his space.

                Stiles was down. His injuries weren’t extensive, but they were severe. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken a bullet, and he’d taken it to the thigh. The blood poured so quickly, hot and steady and too damn much. 

                Stiles' vision was hazy. He couldn’t remember anything but Peter’s begging voice, telling him to ‘Stay, please god just stay with me.’ A litany of ‘I love you I love you I love you,’ and ‘Don’t you fucking die on me,’ were all that followed Stiles' thread of consciousness.

                It was as Stiles lay in a hospital bed, hooked up to life support, monitors beeping, and the pack coming and going, that Peter realized how much he needed Stiles. He couldn’t picture a world without Stiles in it. As hot tears slid down his face, the others quietly filed out, giving him some privacy with the man he loved so deeply. Peter was terrified.

\-----------------------------------

“Rescue my heart

 Oh, rescue my heart.”

 

                Gerard called his men to gather the witch and take her outside the room. “Well?” He asked quietly.

                “Pain. Gerard, he is in so much pain. As soon as you mentioned Stiles. They must have been together because that man in there is heartbroken. He won’t give us anything because he doesn’t care anymore. I don’t think he feels like he has anything to live for.”

                Gerard looked pensive for a moment. He tried to reconsider every interaction he’d ever had with Peter and Stiles. He tried to think to any time they had seemed like more. Dozens of little things sprang to mind. The way that Peter sought out Stiles after the pack meetings he had spied. The way that Stiles always had an extra cup of coffee for Peter when they were working. One was always doing paperwork for the other, while the other worked the store they owned. Gerard had always assumed they simply functioned well as owners of an apothecary and supernatural consulting business. The more he thought, the more it made sense that they were so much more than that.

                “Stay out here for a little while. I'll talk to you in a moment.”

                Gerard re- entered the room, and Peter pointedly avoided looking him in the eye.

                “Did you know, it was five years to the day when he died. To the fucking day.”

                “I’m sorry for your loss.”

                “No. You don’t get to say that. Not when you don't possess the emotional capacity to mean it, and not when you took him away from me.”

                “I had no choice Hale. Werewolves are a plague, and need to be put down."

                "Well Stiles wasn't a werewolf. Stiles could never be a werewolf. The bite would kill him."

                Peter heaved a deep breath, angry at having said so much.

                "Ah, then he was something supernatural. Something ...other."

                Peter thought about how Stiles would have made an excellent wolf. Loyal, and strong. They had talked many times about asking Scott for the Bite, but then Deaton revealed that Stiles was a Spark, and that was the end of that. 

                "I'm not interested in your war. I’ve done a lot of bad shit in my life, but this is too much even for me. I just wanted to live out the rest of my days somewhere quiet with my husband.”

                “Husband?” Gerard said incredulously, his eyebrows nearly touching his hairline.

                “Oh yes. I asked Stiles to marry me a week before your hunters destroyed my apartment. And we'd been together for five fucking years. And I wanted that. I wanted him. That’s what you took from me.”

\----------------------------

“I can’t breathe any faster

 All the air I wanna capture

 It’s heavy and it hurts my head;

 If you found me, would you save me?

 If you touched me, would it break me?

 And will I come back from this?”

 

_< I think the memory of being happy is worse than before I was ever happy. Imagine having a perfect bliss. Everything in your life has fallen into place- even though you never expected it to. Every day is immeasurable joy. You wake up next to the person you love, and all you can think about is how incredibly lucky you are. You do everything with that same perfect joy. You go to work, you go to the gym, go home, go to bed. All you can see in the foreseeable future is the same blissful, perfect happiness. Life feels perfect. Now imagine the stab to the heart when everything falls down around you, because the one thing, the one person who gave you that happiness- was stolen from you.>_

\-------------------------------

“Come down,

 Rescue my heart,

 I’ll drown

 Without you.”

 

               Peter Hale was relocated to a more secure holding location, where he could be plied for all sorts of arcane knowledge on the supernatural. He refused to talk. After a while he refused to eat. It was becoming evident that he wanted nothing more than to lay down and die.

                He had been removed to Eichen House when it was discovered that he was saving plastic spoons and sharpening them. His wrists and legs were covered in slices and gashes, all in various stages of healing. His wolf was grieving the loss of its' mate, and with so long of no food, his metabolism was shutting down. His wolf was no longer healing. 

                The psychologists were at a complete loss for how to deal with Peter. He was more loaded with issues than any patient they’d ever treated, and under Gerard's orders, they were not to treat him. Their orders were to contain him. Peter Hale exuded agony. He couldn’t handle going on without Stiles. He wasn’t complete. He wasn’t worried about saving his soul, or burning in hell. He was already in hell. He was carrying it with him.

                They had scrounged up a priest when it was revealed that Peter had once been a religious man. Maybe they thought it was the last way to appeal to a broken man. The priest could ramble on all he wanted about the afterlife- Peter was tired. His reason for living, the light that had brightened the dark corners of his soul, had been put out. Peter had nothing left.

                He went unnoticed for almost a full day when he escaped from the psychiatric facility.

\--------------------------------

 “Come down and rescue my heart,

  I’ll drown without you,

  I’m deep underground

  I can’t dig my way out

  So come down.”

 

                When the Sheriff received the alert that a werewolf had escaped from the closed unit, he stopped the assembling deputies. Remembering the broken man he’d seen at his son's memorial a few months before, he took only Parrish, and headed straight for the wealthiest district in the Beacon Hills area.

                Following his gut instinct, the Sheriff's first stop was the apartment that Stiles and Peter had shared in the city.

 

\-------------------------------------

“Rescue my heart,    

 Rescue my heart,

 Rescue my heart.”

 

_< You know what truly aches all that you are? Having so much inside you and not having the slightest clue how to pour it all out. All I feel is pain. I know that this isn’t what Stiles would have wanted. He would want me to man the fuck up and move on. But I can’t. He was always so much stronger than me in that regard. How can I just stop needing the man I’ve loved for half a decade? Going on without him makes me feel sick. When I do this, I don’t know if I’ll get to see him again. I’d like to think so. But even if I don’t, it will make me stop missing him, and I’ll take that. So if you’re watching me now, Stiles- I love you._

_Peter >_

 

\---------------------------------------

                The police were finishing up taking their reports, and the coroner’s office had come to take away Peter’s body. His death was ruled a suicide, although the autopsy would have to reveal the actual cause of death. The letter Peter had written was taken in as evidence, but the Sheriff didn’t think he would ever be able to forget the way the words haunted him.

                When it was time for the arrangements to be made, Sheriff Stilinski made a personal trip out to Beacon Hills Preserve. Stiles and Peter had kept a sanctum there, hidden in the rebuilt root cellar of the nemeton. They were the only ones to have used it in years. He took his time, appreciating the stillness and the quiet around him. When he was finished, Stiles and Peter’s ashes were together under six feet of rocky soil. He hoped that they were at least at peace now.

 

“Who will rescue my heart?

 Who will rescue my heart?   

 Who will rescue my heart?

 

Come down 

Rescue my heart

I'll drown

Without you

 

Come down and rescue my heart, 

I’ll drown without you

I’m deep underground

I can’t dig my way out

So come down."


End file.
